Muscle Shoals Music Producer Rick Hall Dies

Muscle Shoals music producer Rick Hall has died. According to his longtime friend Judy Hood, Hall died at his home Tuesday (Jan. 2) after fighting cancer. Hall has been 85.

Hall started FAME Recording Studios in Alabama in 1959, alongside Billy Sherill and Tom Stafford. The studio could turn into a recording home for popular artists such as Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Duane Allman, Wilson Puckett, and more.

FAME Studios house band members could become as well-known in music classes as the artists that they listed for. FAME’s first house rhythm section comprised Norbert Putnam, David Briggs, Peanut Montgomery and Jerry Carrigan. FAME’s second house rhythm section, memorialized as the “Swampers” in Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” left in 1969 to form their own studio, Muscle Shoals Sound.

In 1970, Hall was nominated for a Producer of the Year Grammy. The same decade saw Hall begin utilize Mike Curb, who would bring The Osmonds into the studio to record.